THE ROLE OF MYOGLOBIN IN RETARDING OXYGEN DEPLETION IN SKELETAL-MUSCLE

Myoglobin retards the development of anoxia in a poorly perfused regio n of skeletal muscle by facilitating diffusion into this region from a djacent normally perfused regions and by releasing bound oxygen direct ly into the tissue. We examine these phenomena by analyzing a mathemat ical model of time-dependent myoglobin-facilitated oxygen transport. T he governing equations are solved using similarity transformations and multiple-scale techniques. We find that when perfusion of a region is suddenly decreased, oxygen depletion is significantly retarded by dir ect release of myoglobin-bound oxygen into the tissue and that myoglob in-facilitated diffusion of oxygen from adjacent regions becomes signi ficant at very low oxygen concentration.